


Settle Down Now

by ToukoTai



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Happy AU, written prior to the new season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-09-14
Packaged: 2018-02-17 07:40:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2301791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToukoTai/pseuds/ToukoTai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It turns out that the fall killed the meta, but agent maine managed to pull himself together. And hey, Blue Team has a tradition of picking up Freelancers.</p>
<p>crossposted from tumblr</p>
            </blockquote>





	Settle Down Now

“Well, this going to be just a walk in the-Holy shit!”

“Fucking fuck!”

“Meta alert, META ALERT!”

 

“I see you’ve met Agent Maine.”

“Met him? Lady, he tried to kill us. Multiple times!”

“That was the Meta. This, is Agent Maine.”

“There’s a fucking difference?”

“Yes. Let’s just say that fall from the cliff, knocked a few things back into place. He’ll be helping us.”

 

_Where is Agent Washington?_ Tucker glared at the text on his HUD and glared harder at the white goliath in front of him.

“Why should I tell you anyfuckingthing about Wash?” And there it is, that stupid fucking growl Tucker had heard from Meta. He wasn’t trusting this guy as far as he could throw him. Which, given the Meta’s size and armor, probably wasn’t very far.

_I miss him._ Tucker blinks at that. He hadn’t actually been expecting a real reply, but his anger is far from abated.

“You and me both.” He spits and turns to leave.

_Please._ He draws up sharp with a frustrated growl of his own.

“He got captured. He might be dead.” Even though Tucker knows it was the call to make, the bitter angry resentment still boils under his skin. “Ask Felix for the details.” The Meta doesn’t send any more text and Tucker storms away.

 

He also doesn’t leave Tucker alone either. He’s always there, just at the edge of view. The first few days Tucker had tried to lose him. He learns the Meta is deceptively fast and really fucking quiet when he’s not growling like an engine. He doesn’t approach Tucker, keeps his distance. So Tucker leaves him alone, he doesn’t so much as even look at the Meta.

 

“So why is he even following you?” Grif asks one night. The four of them have a ritual, they always eat dinner together, outside the mess, away from the others. Just the four of them, two reds and two blues. Simmons and Grif sitting on one side, Caboose and him facing them. It’s a measure of security to them. Red vs Blue, how it’s supposed to go.

“I don’t fucking know.” Tucker pushes his rations around and then flops onto his back. “He bother any of you?” Simmons shrugs and Grif shakes his head, even as he reaches out to snag Tucker’s abandoned plate. “Great, so he’s fixated on me, fanfuckingtastic.”

“Maybe he is lonely.” Caboose volunteers.

“No Caboose. This is one pet you are not bringing home.” Caboose patted Tucker’s knee.

“Oh he would not be a pet, Tucker.” Tucker waits, he knows Caboose, there’s always a second part. “He would be a friend!” Simmons and Grif groaned in tandem. Tucker slapped a gloved hand over his face.

“No Caboose!”

 

Tucker lasts almost an entire week, before he finally breaks down.

“Okay dude, you win.” The Meta’s helmet tips up to him, Tucker had decided that if this confrontation was going to happen. It was going to happen while he was standing and the Meta was sitting, but even sitting down, the Meta’s a giant. Tucker repressed a shudder at his reflection in the orange vid plate. “What the hell do you want?” Tucker gets the feeling the Meta is considering him, looking him over and he gets more and more impatient. Just as he’s about to leave, he gets a text communication.

_You knew Washington._ Tucker has to let out an explosive sigh at that.

“So did Grif, so did Simmons, hell, Caboose knew him longer then me. So why?” The Meta puts aside the datapad he was reading. (Tucker wasn’t suicidal enough to approach him when he had been cleaning his weapons.)

_You were on the same team._ He’s so close to reaching out and attempting to strangle the Meta.

_You miss him. So do I._ And Tucker deflates. The text doesn’t have a tone attached to it and maybe it’s stupid, but Tucker isn’t going to throw away one of the last bits of a connection he has to Wash left.

“So does Caboose.” Doesn’t mean he’s going to make it easy, though it’s a weak protest, even to his own ears.

_You’re easier to understand._ Tucker manages a weak snicker as the words roll across his HUD. He’s brought the text box up to a more prominent position on the display.

“You got that right.” Silence envelopes them but for the distance buzz of insects and chatter of troops. “You know, I hated Wash half the time I knew him.” Tucker doesn’t know why he said that, nor why he’s suddenly sitting down next to the Meta-next to Maine.

_?_

“He just.” Tucker’s not quite sure how to proceed. But Maine is listening intently, he can tell, so he continues. “He reminded me of who wasn’t there, instead of who was. And he was fucking ridiculously strict. Kept trying to push us, me, really, into being better fighters. Made us run obstacles courses and shit.” Tucker shrugged. “Didn’t seem that important at the time, so I…resented him. I guess. Told him so to his face. And he still went off and got himself kil-captured for us.” There’s more silence and it’s killing Tucker a little. Finally text scrolls across his HUD.

_The Washington I knew was very different and very much the same._ And Tucker breathes out. It’s the closest he can get to forgiveness until they find Wash. But he’ll take it.

“Oh yeah?” He remembers, vaguely, Wash saying something about being known for taking a grappling hook to the groin in Freelancer. Maine would know about that, he supposes and other things that Wash might not have wanted them to know, for embarrassing reasons. Tucker is not above gathering a lot of blackmail for when Wash comes back. (Because he is. He’s Blue team now. Blue team always come back. He should know, he did.)

_He was the rookie._ Maine sends with a shrug. A weird combo, Maine shrugged when he sent the message, two milliseconds before Tucker received and then read it. It’s like watching a movie where the dialogue is half a second ahead of the motions. Except the motions are ahead of the dialogue.  
 _He used to skateboard through the halls._ And Maine is doing that meta growl, except not. It’s more like a purr this time. It’s almost as distracting as the mental image of Washington skateboarding.

“You’re kidding.” Tucker says instead. Maine shakes his head, hunching over to rest his arms on his legs, datapad dangling forgotten from one hand.

_South would yell at him he crashed into her once._ There’s a continuous broken hiccup of static, it takes Tucker a second to realize, Maine is laughing, shoulders shaking. Tucker snorts. Well, if this was going to be a sharing of Wash’s funniest moments, he could help.

“He accidentally voted himself out of the Blue team leader position.” Tucker volunteers, smiling in spite of himself. He has no idea who South is or was, but Washington getting into a crash with someone on a skateboard, was something Tucker wouldn’t let him live down.(When they found him, when, not if.) Maine turns to look at Tucker, and that orange dome vidplate isn’t as creepy as it was before. “Not even kidding dude, he said it sarcastically. But our robot registered it as a real thing.” Tucker pauses for a second, he can feel the laughter just behind his tongue. “Guess who he voted for?”

_Who?_

“Fucking Caboose!” Tucker crows and Maine does that static laugh but louder. “He was so damn mad but he couldn’t undo it. It was hilarious as shit.” The laughter winds down and Maine’s hand twitches, the datapad swinging between his fingers.

_I miss Wash._

“Me too.”

_We were bunkmates._

“So were we.”

They lapse into silence again.

 

“Thought you weren’t bringing this pet home?” Grif drawls around a stolen snack cake. Where he gets them, no one has any idea. Tucker shrugs. Next to him, Maine is leaning back as far as he can, without tipping over, from Caboose’s over enthusiastic meet and greet. Simmons is seated with Grif between him and Maine’s hulking presence.

“You know,” He points out. “The teams are uneven now.” There’s a familiar comfort in thinking of themselves as teams. That if everything else is in upheaval, they still have this. Because Red vs Blue, Blue vs Red. This is who they are down to their core, even if they were horrible at it, even if it isn’t the case any more, it’s still where they came from. And they’ll hold on to it.

“They’ll be even when we get the others.” Tucker replies, taking a bite of the tasteless rations.

“No they won’t.” Grif slaps a hand down. “You’ll have two freelancers and we’ll have none!” This is easy, comforting, familiar for all parties involved. Except for maybe Maine, but he didn’t seem to mind or be paying attention. Bickering over the state of the teams, which side was unbalanced, which teammates would make it even. Tucker falls into old conversation habits happily.

“Tough luck, I ain’t trading either one. You’ll still have that damn warthog and our tank is gone.” Grif subsides with a grumble.

“Did you hear that Agent Maine?” Caboose says, excitedly throwing up his hands. “You’re Blue Team now!”

 

Somehow, Maine figured out how to change his white text to blue. Tucker grins the first time he sees the letters scroll across his HUD.

 

Tucker is helping Wash out of the base. It was a whirlwind fight, a smash and grab quite literally. Sarge and Donut are behind him, complaining the entire way, but mostly at each other. Sarge dragging Donut along the ground by a foot, because apparently hard time behind bars has made Donut a ‘fragile shell’ of his old self. So fragile, he’s overcome with feeling, and can’t walk the fifteen minutes from his cell to the outside. Tucker could swear he heard Wash’s eye roll as the other had reported that to him in a voice so dry, it put the desert to shame. Sarge seemed perfectly fine, though upset at having to share a cell with a ‘dirty blue’ for so long. Wash was the only one truly hurt. Something wrong with his leg.

“Pulled a muscle in my knee, I think.”

“How the hell did you do that?” Tucker had demanded, even as he slung Wash’s arm around his shoulders and pulled him upright. “You’ve been sitting in a fucking ten by ten prison cell. What could you possibly have done to mess up your knee so badly, the suit won’t fix it?” He felt rather than saw Wash raise a shoulder in a half shrug. The two were hobbling out of the cell as fast as Wash could manage.

“It was Donut’s idea.” Was the reply.

“And you did what he said?!” Tucker was incredulous, Wash perhaps sensing the storm of teasing hanging over his head, wouldn’t say anything more on the subject.

It didn’t occur to Tucker to warn Wash about Maine. In fact it hadn’t occurred to Tucker to say anything about Maine at all, until about two minutes after they had exited the base. Right around the time he felt Wash tense and hiss under his breath through the helmet. Tucker followed the angle of Wash’s vidplate, to see Maine baring down on them. Wash knocked him aside, placing himself between Tucker and what he thought was the Meta. Tucker found himself thanking every lucky star he had that Wash still hadn’t procured a weapon. Because Maine was suddenly there, sweeping the other Freelancer up and crushing him in a brutal hug.

“Tucker, is this an attack?” Wash’s voice had taken on the high pitched quality, not quite a squeak but close, it did when he was upset. “Why are you just standing there?” Maine’s rumbling growl reverberated through the air and the ground and Washington was squeezed tighter. Tucker couldn’t help but laugh. “Why are you just laughing?” Wash semi shrieked.

“Nah dude, Maine’s just showing ya how much he missed ya.” Tucker managed to get out around continued laughter as Wash flailed in Maine’s grasp.

“I don’t…what?!” Sooner rather than later, Tucker knows he’ll have to explain everything to Wash. It won’t do for Washington to keep trying to kill the only other Freelancer on their side. Even then, Tucker doubts Wash will believe them, at first anyway. Paranoid special ops, he had called Wash and that’s still true. Probably more true now than before. But Tucker’s learned that Maine is nothing if not persistent, so he’s pretty confident things will get straightened out. And then later, together, they’ll finish this war.


End file.
